Women's Rights Dbq Essay

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Women throughout the course of history have been seen as inferior to men. Our society has been based on gender roles since the beginning of time. This was no different in America, the roles of women have always been housework, raising children, and tending to their husbands while the traditional roles of men were to be the breadwinners of their households. Men were allowed to get an education and vote while women were not. This is not to say that these roles have been challenged. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was one of the first steps that were taken in the women’s rights movement. During this convention, suffrage rights for women were discussed in the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the Declaration of Independence. This movement …show more content…

Women were able to join the workforce since there was an increased need for workers while most men were out fighting in war. In a photograph in Washington in 1919 we can see women lined up with working attire as they work on the construction of a ship. (Doc. 3A) This is significant because we see that they are able to contribute and work, demonstrating a shift in what their roles were considered to be. The idea that women were meant to be nothing more than housewives were discarded after the increased need for workers. The purpose of this document is to show that women are helping in duties outside the household. This is important because this was unconventional at the time. Additonally, there is a chart that shows that there was a significant increase in jobs held by women in professional fields such as clerical, professional, service, and sales workers which shows that women were climbing up the ladder in terms of jobs. This increase in women in the workforce is further confirmed with the drop in jobs such as household, factory, and farm workers (Doc 3B). Women are now taking on more professional jobs that were typically for men and that alone is a significant change. This was an increase that happened as a result of the shift in what is considered a womans